Weekend Update 04-07-2012

Gotta love the title of this column, Pink Slime Economics. Although, as Krugman notes, labeling Ryan’s fraudulent budget by that name actually does a disservice to pink slime. I like his comparison instead to the food preparation practices of unregulated 19th century corporations. And yes, while budgets have often been deceptive or relied on accounting tricks, the Ryan budget truly is the most outright fraudulent budget in our history. It asserts we will essentially eliminate all spending other than defense, social security, some health programs (including a new program labeled Medicare but completely unlike the current Medicare), and interest on the federal debt. His budget leaves no room for any other spending whatsoever. That’s bad, but the most fraudulent part is on the revenue side. Between making the Bush tax cuts permanent and adding his own, he proposes a staggering $10 trillion dollars in tax cuts — almost entirely favoring the rich and corporate interests. Even eliminating virtually all federal spending won’t pay for those cuts, so instead he proposes closing loopholes. In order to accomplish what the math in the fraudulent budget asserts will happen, we would have to discover $700 billion a year of such loopholes. However, he rules out closing the loopholes that benefit the rich and which, for instance, allow Romney to pay a mere 14% in federal taxes. So where are all these magical loopholes? He won’t say. It’s not his job. But he knows they must be there somewhere. He’s a liar on such a colossal scale it’s unbelievable.

Well, we already know that Gingrich and many others in the modern GOP are against child labor laws, so it’s not particularly surprising that the most recent precedent for striking down the Affordable Care Act is a decision which struck down a child labor law in 1918. It’s reached the point that the question must be asked. Why does anyone other than the most wealthy vote for these people? As a nation, are we really that stupid? And yes, it looks like the Roberts court may very well go down in history as one as bad and evil as those courts. He wants a legacy. I guess he’s not picky what sort of legacy it is.

I don’t actually have much to say about Krugman’s column, Not Enough Inflation, itself. It’s actually a fairly mundane column focusing on economics. And from the small bits I understand about macroeconomics, it seems like a reasonable column. But on this column, I actually read some of the comments. I suppose I should be used to it on the Internet, but I’m nonetheless still surprised at the number of people willing to make combative and authoritative public claims on a topic which their comment clearly illustrates they actually know little or nothing about — in this case macroeconomics. Now, I don’t know much about macroeconomics myself, but I do know enough to sift the obvious nonsense from the stuff that might have some validity.

There is a sad element to the Daily Show. Very often, Jon doesn’t really have to do much but highlight the absurdity in our present reality. It’s sad that things have sunken to such depths. It’s even sadder that those involved don’t even realize how absurd and ridiculous they are. This segment explores the recent Arizona law banning ethnic studies by focusing on Tucson, which has banned Mexican-American studies. For those unfamiliar with history, Arizona was actually part of Mexico until the Mexican War in the middle of the 19th century.